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The Supreme Court of Wisconsin. his character, radiant as the sunlight, shining as the stars." BYRON PAINE was born in Painesville, Ohio, October 10, 1827. His father was Gen eral James H. Paine, a lawyer of good ability, and prominent as one of the leaders of the great antislavery movement. He was from Puritan stock, and at one time

lived in Vergennes, Vermont, though born in Connecticut. He settled in Paines ville, Ohio, in 1821, and became promi nent as a lawyer and as one of the sterling abolitionists of the time. He died, some eight years after his son's death, at the advanced age of eighty-seven years. General Paine re moved to Milwaukee, Wis., in 1847, with his family, and there practiced law. His son, Byron, studied law with him, and was admitted to the bar in 1849. He re IÍYRON ceived in youth a thorough academic education, but was not learned in the Greek or Latin. He became a fine German scholar, and in his youth made political speeches in that language, and during his later judicial life loved to refresh his mind with the productions of Lessing, Schiller and Goethe. He was fond of sports, and in his boyhood, deer-hunting was his delight, and the woods near Milwaukee afforded this noble game. He was a strong, athletic, manly youth, vigorous in body and mind. He found great pleasure in billiards and chess.

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During the leisure of his early practice, he wrote for the public press on the subject of slavery and the great controversy between the sections then waging. He frequently entered into popular discussions. Thus he acquired facility of composition, great readi ness in the clear and forcible expression of ideas, and an eloquence rarely equalled and never excelled by any public man of the State. His name be ca m e prominent in the events following the seizure of Glover, the fugitive slave, of which an account is given above. With all his soul Byron Paine hated slavery, and the arrest of the poor black man aroused all the sym pathies of an ardent nature and all the powers of a mind sin gularly strong and gifted. In 1854, he made an argument against the constitu tionality of the fugi tive-slave law, which started . him on the road to fame as a jurist and advocate. PAINE. Of his labors in that case, his opponent, Edward G. Ryan, said : "When I first met Judge Paine at the bar he was still a very young man, but he had already given unmistakable evidence of the power that was in him. The first opportunity I had of forming an estimate of his high ability was in the famous case under the fugitive-slave act, in 1854 and 1855. He was employed for the defendant; I, for the United States. We both brought to the case, not only ordinary professional zeal, but all the prejudices of our lives. He was a frank and manly aboli